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Tuesday, October 27, 2015

From Wood to Nightstands

This project has been awhile in the making! We started this project in July and it has taken us some time to completely finish it. We decided to take on the huge task of building nightstands from scratch. We knew we needed new nightstands for our master bedroom and we wanted something nice and unique without spending a ton of money. So we decided to build them ourselves. We followed Ana White's design and it worked out exactly as we hoped.

The first step in our process was collecting our supplies. We knew we wanted to invest in a bunch of tools so we figured now was a good time as any. We bought a ton of power tools including a saw, a sander, an air compressor, a nail gun, and a kreg jig (more on that later). We also bought all of the wood needed for our project. All the specifications for size and cuts can be found on the Ana White website. With all of our stuff, the jeep was pretty full and it was a little scary getting home.

Once we got home and figured out how to use all our new tools, we were ready to start building. We first cut all of our pieces according to our directions.

We then started with the sides. We used the Kreg Jig which is a handy little tool that you use to make pocket holes for screws. It makes joining pieces of wood together extremely easy and therefore makes building things even easier. We had to join four pieces of wood together to start the sides. We marked where we wanted our pocket holes to lie on our side boards. We then drilled our pocket holes with the Kreg Jig and used screws the attach the boards together.

On the outside of the side panel (did you get that?), we added trim on the top and bottom with the nail gun to make it look clean and crisp. It also helped to flatten out our boards since they were not entirely flat.

We then added a piece of wood on each side with another pocket hole and screw which then created the legs of the nightstand.

We then repeated this process for the other side of the nightstand. From there we had to attach the sides together. The directions make it extremely clear that everything needed to be perfect in order for the drawers to work properly. It took a little finagling and creativity, but we were able to add the connecting pieces so that everything looked good and seemed to fit together correctly. Each beam was added using screws and pocket holes to make everything secure.

Richard then gave it all a good sanding so that we were ready to move on to the next step.

Next came adding the tops of the nightstand. We had different sizes as directed and the back ends up being flush so that it can sit against the wall without a gap. The top pieces were glued and then nailed down.

Next came the hardest part: the drawers. We did not really think about it before we started, but it makes sense that drawers would be hard. If everything does not line up perfectly then the drawers will not slide well and will get stuck. So we had to make extra sure that the drawers were perfect. We started by drilling pocket holes so that we could create the corners of the drawers.

Once the drawer frame was complete, we added the bottom piece of plywood with the nail gun and some glue. When everything was dry and sanded, we added the drawer glides to the drawer and the inside of the nightstand.

We found that by using the drawer to line everything up instead of actually measuring we were able to attach things more precisely. This way if the drawer was crooked, then so was the drawer glide. We also did not attach the drawer front until we had a perfectly gliding drawer. This worked in our favor because our drawers are not perfectly centered in the opening so the drawer front is a little lopsided. But, on the outside you cannot tell a difference. We figured out where to place the drawer front by installing the drawer and then Richard would hold the drawer front in place while I drew a line on the inside. This way we knew it would look good from the front and would fit perfectly in the opening. We attached the drawer front using glue and the nail gun.

Then we officially had one finished nightstand! We were so proud when we put the drawers in and it looked completely legit! We finished this one nightstand over the course of a weekend. We knew we still had to create a whole second nightstand and we were really busy for the next few months. We ended up making the second night stand about a month later. Building the second nightstand was both easier and faster now that we had already completed one.

We have been using these night stands for the last few months and they have been great. It took us (well, me really) a long time to decide how we wanted to finish them. We had to decide what we wanted to do with the rest of the room before we could decide on a finish for the nightstands. We finally made a decision for the room (more on that later) so we decided to paint the night stands blue. We even tried to see if a blue stain with a white wash would be fun, but it ended up not turning out how we wanted it to. So we decided on a navy blue paint with gold pulls and we love the result! Those arrow pulls that we found at Hobby Lobby are so fun! We are glad to finally have pulls on the drawers because months of opening drawers without them was not fun.